


To Have Someone To Depend On

by Unknown_Art



Category: Clannad
Genre: Brooding, Counselor Koumura, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26472220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unknown_Art/pseuds/Unknown_Art
Summary: After forcing to live life on his own after his mother's death, Okazaki once again learns what it feels like to have someone's looking out for you when Koumura catches him sulking by a school building and offers to help him with what he's dealing with.
Kudos: 3





	To Have Someone To Depend On

The same crystal blue skies that appeared everyday mocked Okazaki as he leaned against one of the school buildings. Those skies were a reminder of how insignificant his existence was in the grand scheme of things was. How his life had become nothing more than a dull, monotonous, cycle he was repeating every day.

Each morning for him started the same way; he would reluctantly push himself out of bed and throw on that same stupid uniform his school forced every male student to wear. Then after he would waste the same twenty minutes of his life walking up the hill to that miserable place people called school, that's when the inevitable would happen.

He would not only be instructed to sit in his chair like every other good responsible student, but on top of that he was also expected to endure the long torturous hours of classes with teachers that taught in the most unenthusiastic voices known to mankind. He often wondered how the other students hadn't died yet from boredom as they listened to the agonizingly uninteresting lectures that spouted from their teacher's mouth.

Though to be honest it's not like Okazaki actually paid any attention to those dumb lectures, he had started to tune his teachers' voices out a long time ago. Their voices had been reduced to being just mere background noise in Okazaki's dull existence.

It's not like what the other teachers' could say would actually impact him in anyway. All the school cared about was preparing it's students for entrance exams. They wanted their students to enter prestigious universities, not because it would actually better their students' education. No, they just wanted to use it as an excuse to boast about how Hikarizaka Private High School was better than the rest.

Though no matter how hard the school members might try to convince him, there was no way Okazaki would ever go to college. As he had been told many times before, college was a place meant for passionate people to help chase their dreams. It was a place that motivated people thrived in. It was a place for people with grand dreams that they couldn't obtain on their own.

But Okazaki had none of these things. He had no grand dreams to chase after, no aspirations he was passionate about, and no motivation to move onward.   
Everyone was already busy preparing for the next major steps in their lives while Okazaki's life had just remained stagnant.

While most of the seniors occupied their class time by writing down notes and reviewing lessons for their entrance exams to college, Okazaki had kept staring out the same window like he always did. There wasn't much other he could do to past the time. Sure, he could've skipped class and go somewhere else, but even that got boring once you've done it enough times.

Okazaki continued to reflect on his life as he leaned against the school building. All he did was past the time until he could find something to entertain himself for a while. He would jump from thing to thing to find anything to satisfy himself. He was trapped in a boring tedious life that he could not escape from.

He looked down at a patch of grass beneath him and let out a heavy sigh. Was this really all his life was destined to be? Was he doomed to repeat this cycle for the rest of his life? Okazaki was getting depressed at just the mere thought of it.

Though before his thoughts got a chance to wander into the darkest depths of his mind like it had done so many times before, a familiar voice broke him from his thoughts.

"Ah, Okazaki-kun there you are. I've been looking for you."

 _Koumura?_ Okazaki thought as he looked up and recognized the old man walking towards him wearing his signature green vest and blue tie. He was surprised to see the other man here, he never saw Koumura walk over on this part of the school before. The older man's classrooms were on the opposite side of the school, so there was really no reason for him to be here in the first place.

"What are you doing all the way out here? Did old age finally hit you and you finally lost your sense of direction?" Okazaki asked the older man.

"No, I may be getting up in the years, but I'm still perfectly capable with handling directions," Koumura explained as he walked a couple of steps closer to Okazaki.

"I mean I found the person I'm looking for so I wouldn't exactly call that being lost," he continued to say.

The teen looked off into the distance at the world that was beyond the school gates, "So what did you come out and see me for? Did you need me for something?"

"No, I didn't come here to demand anything from you," Koumura responded.

Okazaki glanced back at the man and asked   
"Then what are you here for?"

"Well I came here because I felt concerned," he admitted.

Tilting his head to the side Okazaki asked, "Concerned? About what?"

"For some reason I suddenly got worried on how you were doing," Koumura began to explain, "I guess you could call it some sort of counselor intuition I had. There was this sudden feeling inside of me that told me I needed to come check on you."

 _Counselor intuition?_ Okazaki thought, _It honestly sounds more like you used some secret telepathic power to know something like that._

It wasn't the first time Koumura had done something like this. Whenever Okazaki least expected it the old man seemed to pop in and check on him every once in a while. It was often so spontaneous the teen never knew how to react to it. It was weird though, that Koumura always seemed to show up when Okazaki was at his mentally lowest. It was almost as if he had some sort of internal alarm that alerted himself when Okazaki was in trouble.

The old man was an enigma to him, Okazaki didn't understand the man's motives or his strange obsession with him. He didn't understand why Koumura cared for an outcast like him. He didn't understand why he seemed to care so much about a delinquent like him that had no hope for a bright future. He didn't understand why he was the only adult that seemed to care for him at all.

Okazaki just couldn't get it.

The old man's actions reminded Okazaki of a concerned parent. Y'know the type of parent that always asked how school was when they got home. The type of parent that was constantly involved in their child's life. The type of parent that sacrificed and did everything they could to provide the best future for their child. The type of parent that every child should have, but the cruel reality they were forced to live in made it impossible to.

Okazaki knew that fact well, he probably knew it far too well for someone his age. Every since his mother passed, his home life has been completely devoid of any sense of love and closeness between people. The only close family he had left was his father, who ever since his wife's death has only treated Okazaki as a stranger and made alcohol his new best friend.

The day Okazaki's mother had died; Okazaki hadn't just lost one parent he had lost them both. Even though his father still physically existed with him, his father merely acted as a husk of the person he once was. If he wasn't past out in the living room, he would drunkly stumbled around the house barely acknowledging his son's presence. Okazaki could come back early the next morning and his father wouldn't notice or care. So with no real parents of his own, the teen was forced to live life on his own.

So isn't it clear now? Okazaki had made peace with the fact that he wasn't going to get another chance at having a caring parent. He had buried all those kinds of wishes and desires about how he wished his life turned out differently a long time ago.

He had thought he would be fine surviving on his own. He had thought he had finally moved past at all that, but with Koumura always coming around and acting so parentally around him, well it felt like it was digging up old memories off the past. Being struck back with all these feelings with what a normal parent once felt like, reopened a flood of emotions and thoughts he had been trying to deny and suppress for years.

 _Dammit! I don't want to deal with this right now!_ Okazaki frustratedly told himself. He really didn't want to think about the past. Every time he did that it felt like old feelings he had trapped inside him were trying to break free from the darkness within Okazaki and see the light.

If his relationship with Koumura kept developing like this, Okazaki's wasn't sure what'll happen, but if it kept up dragging up old feelings like this, he knew it couldn't be good. He had to get the old man to leave; he didn't want to deal with all these old emotions he had been trying to suppress. He just needed space to think and be alone right now.

"Well, If you just came to check in on how I was doing then you can clearly see that I'm fine," Okazaki quickly said. Hoping that answer would satisfy the older man and get him to leave.

Koumura raised his eyebrow "That can't be true though, I saw you sulking when I came over here. That doesn't seem very fine to me," he pointed out.

The teen turned his head away from the other man. _Shit, had he really been around that long to catch me moping like that?_ Okazaki wondered. The fact that he had not only been caught in a lie, but Koumura had also seen him in such a depressed state was absolutely humiliating to Okazaki.

Noticing the teen's sudden silence, Koumura walked over and stood next to Okazaki as he leaned against the school building. The older man glanced over at the teen and noticed how Okazaki's eyes seemed determined to fixate on anything but Koumura's face.

Teens were naturally stubborn when it came to talking about their feelings, but delinquent boys often had more difficulty with them then the rest. Koumura knew that very well, he had many years of previous counseling experience to testify to that. Forcing Okazaki to speak about his feelings right now, wouldn't help him and would only hurt him in the long run. Okazaki needed to learn how to handle his emotions at his own pace that was the only way he would truly ever improve.

So Koumura didn't force Okazaki to speak or even look at him. He just hoped that Okazaki would hear him out on what he has to say and think about it.

"You know I'm always open to talk about to you about any of your problems or feelings. I mean I am a counselor after all, it's my job to help you with your problems," the old man stated.

Okazaki didn't say a word in response; he just kept staring off into the distance. He didn't want to talk about his feelings. I mean what would even be the point of it all? Talking about his problems didn't make them go away, it wouldn't change anything. He would still be stuck in the same rut as he always was whether he chose to speak or not. So why would he even bother wasting his breath on something that didn't matter?

Expecting the teen's silence, Koumura commented, "I knew you wouldn't ever tell me that easily. You've never exactly been open about personal your feelings with others. Even after the couple of years I know you, I bet there are still a lot of secrets about you that I don't know about."

 _There are a lot of things a lot of people don't know about me,_ Okazaki internally remarked. There were many secrets he held, that he had purposely buried away in the deepest depths of himself so they would never be seen again. There were a lot of memories he wish he could forget and wanted to pretend never happened.

"I know you're not going tell me any of them," Koumura admitted, "It's easier for people to just bury those problems and feelings as secrets so they never have to confront them. They hide them deep down in places where people can't see them. They do it so they never have to face the the difficult hardships and challenges in overcoming them."

"Confronting our feelings and problems is not an easy feat, but it's an important skill to learn how to healthy respond and cope with them," he continued to say," If you don't learn how to properly deal with them, then these feelings and problems stuck inside you then they will just slowly gnaw away at you from the inside. Hurting you more and more every day when you don't do anything about them."

Koumura's eyes looked down at the ground when he said "Believe me I know very well from personal experience."

It was silent for a few moments after he said that. The only noise that could be heard between the two them was the sound of rustling leaves in the wind. Koumura wasn't sure if what he said was actually getting through to Okazaki. He honestly wasn't even sure the boy was actually listening to him at all, but even if Okazaki hadn't been listening at all he wasn't going let that deter him. He would ramble on as much as he needed to, to get through to him. If the teen was going to act stubborn with him than he had a right to act stubborn as well. So it didn't matter how long he had to wait, if it took one week, a year, or the rest of his life time, Koumura would never give up on Okazaki.

After spending a while in silence Okazaki finally got the courage to speak up "What kinda personal experience are you talking about?"

Hearing Okazaki's voice caused Koumura to glance over at Okazaki. The teen still wasn't looking at him; his eyes were focused on the world the existed below the hill the school stood on. He may have not been looking at Koumura, but he could tell Okazaki was still listening to him. It was only a gut feeling really, but something deep inside him told him that was the truth, so he was going to treat it like such. He wasn't going to waste this potential opportunity.

With the teen's curiosity peaked, Koumura seized the chance to explain "Well, back when I was much younger than I am now, I used to be quite the delinquent back in the day."

" _You_ were a delinquent?!" Okazaki replied with a shocked looked on his face.

It was so hard to imagine someone as kind hearted and gentle as Koumura being the rebellious type when he was younger. Actually the thought of him being young at one point was hard for Okazaki to picture at all. I mean he knew it was impossible for a person to come out the womb as a fully developed person, but he just couldn't picture Koumura as anything but a nice old man that helped people.

"Don't act so surprised about it. The fact that I had been a delinquent then actually helped me become a counselor today," Koumura responded.

"I wasn't an extremely hardcore delinquent or anything, but I did engage in risky behavior and made some stupid decisions that I found entertaining at the time. I got involved with the wrong crowds and acted out because of some personal events going on at my home," the counselor continued to say.

"I was going down a bad path in my life," he admitted.

"How did you get out of it?" Okazaki asked.

"One of my teachers, actually came to talk to me about it," Koumura replied, "I thought he was stubborn and annoying at the time with how he always went out of his way to talk to me, but now I know he was only doing it because he cared for me."

"He'd always found the opportunity to talk to me when I was alone; when I was free from my peer's influence on my choices and could truly act like the real me without fear of judgement from my peers. He spoke to me all three years I attended high school, always making sure I was okay, giving me advice when I needed it, slowly teaching me how to open up to others, and teaching me how to properly face my problems."

"So was your teacher the person who also inspired you to become a counselor in the first place?" Okazaki asked.

"Yes, he taught me many lessons that I wanted to share to other people. It inspired me to figure out a way to help teens that are stuck in similar situations that I was when I was younger," Koumura explained.

 _So that's why he doing this? That's why he's so determined to help someone like me? He's trying to prevent me from going the wrong path like he almost did?_ Okazaki thought.

_Is he doing this because he cares about me?_

That thought, brought back the same feeling of unease when he first noticed how parentally Koumura started to act around him. The idea of someone caring for him so greatly was foreign to Okazaki. His father treated him as a stranger in their own home. He didn't speak to him as his son. He didn't speak to him as he was his own flesh in blood. He didn't speak to him as the only family he had left since his mother passed. He spoke to him as Okazaki was just some stranger, he had met for the first time. He used unnecessary formalities that were common between two people that barely knew each other.

With how distant the two were Okazaki didn't live with a father, he lived with a complete stranger. So Okazaki didn't know what a real parent was supposed to be like. He never had to deal with someone constant nagging and worrying about everything he did. He didn't have a mother or father that cared about his wellbeing. For a long time it felt like Okazaki had no one that truly seemed to care for him.

But when Koumura stepped into his life, it felt like the first time someone started to look out for him. It was the first time that someone seemed to be genuinely concerned about him and wanted to help him.

After spending all that time alone though, Okazaki didn't know how to respond Koumura's help. He had tried to build up a wall so he didn't need anyone's help. He built up a wall so he didn't have to confront how broken he was on the inside.

The old man though, was wise enough to see right through the facade he put up. Okazaki didn't know how to handle that. He didn't want to reopen old wounds and confront them. He didn't want to worry about people caring about him. He just wanted to be left alone like he always had been.

"If you want to help me, just give up on me," Okazaki coldly told the old man.

He really didn't want to be cold to Koumura; he was probably one of the nicest people he's ever met. He didn't deserve cruel treatment Okazaki had given him, but the teen didn't know how else to respond. Okazaki had accepted the fact that he was predestined to be a lost cause a long time ago. Couldn't someone as smart as Koumura see that as well? Couldn't he see that it was far too late to help someone like Okazaki?

"Give up on you?" Koumura repeated in shock, "That’s... That's one thing I can't ever do."

Okazaki curled his hand into a fist with how frustrated he was getting. Couldn't the old man see he was beyond saving? Why was he being so stubborn about helping him?

Releasing his anger the only way he knew how the teen lashed out, "Why not?! Can't you just see that no matter how hard you try nothing will ever change! You're help won't matter in the end! We’ll just end up wasting all of our energy for nothing! Why are you being so damn insistent about this?!"

"Why? Isn't it clear? It's because you are important to me," Koumura responded with a genuine look on his face. There was no reason for the old man to lie about the truth.

The teen froze up when he heard the counselor's words. Okazaki didn't know why, but hearing that he was important to someone, hearing that someone was looking out for him, hearing that someone cared for him, made him feel strangely happy. Though this kind of happiness was something he hadn't experienced in a long time, it was foreign feeling, but not an unpleasant one. It was something he wish he could've got the chance to experienced more often.

 _You really are something special aren't you old man?_ Okazaki thought. Getting past all of Okazaki's formidable walls so easily like this, Koumura really was fit be a counselor.

"So why don't you let me help you with whatever you're dealing with? You don't need to fight with whatever you're dealing with on your own. Let me be there to help you through any problems or challenges you're facing me," The counselor continued to say.

Okazaki wanted to deny Koumura, he really did. Every bone in his body was telling him it would be a bad idea to do this, talking to the old man wouldn't change anything, but....

Deep down there was a part of him that wanted to trust Koumura, a part of him that wanted to take the chance. A part of him that wanted to see if it would actually work.

"Fine, I'll give it a shot," Okazaki finally gave in, "If it makes you happy and gets you to leave me alone after than I'll do it."

A satisfied grin spread across the old man's face, his constant stubbornness all this time seemed to have finally paid off.

"I'm glad to hear that, we can finally have an honest talk in my office about everything after school is done. Since I do believe class is going to start again soon. You should get going before you're late," Koumura advised.

"Oh yeah I still have classes..." the teen reminded himself.

"Welp, I guess I'll just talk to you later old man," Okazaki told Koumura before he started to walk away to his classroom's building.

He wasn't really sure about this whole talking about his feeling and problems with Koumura, but he did feel more at ease than before. He wondered if this is what it felt like when someone wanted to look out for you. He was still a bit hesitant about someone caring about him; the idea was still relatively new to him so it was to be expected. But y'know what? It didn't feel bad at all for someone to act like this. Okazaki was actually kind of interested in where they would go from here. He wasn't sure where that would be exactly, but with the old man's help he didn't think it'd be anywhere bad.


End file.
